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Summary: Best book on TCP/IP
Review: A comprehensive clearly written reference and tutorial. This is the best book on TCP/IP. Sometimes there can be subtle bugs in programming TCP/IP that require a greater knowledge of its protocol. This book and its companion volumes will give you the knowledge you need. As an expert on middleware, I've found this book to be indispensible.
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Summary: A staple for understanding protocols.
Review: A must-have for Internet/intranet developers, and anyone trying to get a handle on exactly what is going on with almost any protocol. This is the definitive guide to understanding the protocols down to their basest level.
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Summary: A networking classic
Review: Another masterpiece by the late Richard Stevens. This book is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand what goes on at the protocol level whenever any kind of interaction happens on the internet. Take any application level protocol - FreeNet, P2P, RTP, and you will understand its underpinnings thoroughly after having read this book. If you find the content a bit overwhelming, make sure you read Tanenbaum's "Computer Networks" before diving into this book.
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Summary: Required for every IT library
Review: As the review title suggests, this book should be in every IT professionals library.
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Summary: The definitive guide to TCP/IP protocols
Review: Despite being slightly dated (1994) Stevens' book is perhaps the most useful and informative available on this topic. Stevens has a vast knowledge of TCP/IP protocols and continually drops gems of useful info throughout the book (ex. common ephemeral port ranges). Particularly useful are his discussion of MTU relating to ethernet, ins and outs of subnet masks, different kinds of ICMP, structure DNS and SMTP. Stevens does get a bit long-winded in his discussion of TCP timing and how to reduce congestion in different environments. Nonetheless, this is an exceptional book that will be useful for many years to come.
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Summary: Somewhat out of date...but excellent
Review: Even though this book was published in 1994, it still serves as a useful reference and learning tool for the TCP/IP protocol. There are of course changes and additions that have been made to TCP/IP over the last 7 years such as IPv6, but one can still refer to this book as a good source of information about the dynamics of TCP/IP. There are exercises at the end of each chapter, so it can, and has been used as an effective textbook. In chapter 1, the author gives a brief overview of protocol layering, Internet addressing, and the domain name system. The encapsulation mechanisms for TCP and UDP are outlined as well as a discussion of the different implementations of TCP/IP. The Vegas implementation is not discussed since it was invented long after the date of publication of this book. Ethernet and the encapsulation provided by IEEE, SLIP, and PPP is discussed in the next chapter on the link layer, along with the loopback interface and MTU. Estimates are given of serial line throughput, setting the stage for later timing calculations. The IP protocol is the subject of chapter 3, the author stressing first the connectionless and unreliable nature of IP packet transfer. The IP datagram format is given in discussed, along with a detailed discussion of subnet addressing and subnet masks. The discussion of IP given here is of course very out of date with the advent of IPv6. Chapter 4 is an overview of ARP, and the author illustrates it effectively using an example of an FTP transfer and Telnet. This is followed by a treatment of RARP in the next chapter, with the limitations of this protocol briefly discussed. Although ARP is incorporated in all current implementations of TCP/IP (with the exception of IPv6), not all of these include RARP. The ICMP error handling protocol is discussed in the next chapter, with all the message types listed, and brief discussions given of timestamp and address mask requests. This is followed naturally by a discussion of the Ping program in chapter 7, which uses ICMP echo request and reply messages. The traceroute program, which finds which path IP packets follow from one to the other, is discussed in Chapter 8. An explicit example is given of how to use traceroute. Then in the next chapter, IP routing is discussed, along with an explicit example of a routing table. Again, the discussion is out-of-date, since in IPv6, the router discovery is replaced by a mandatory router solicitation and advertisement mechanism. Dynamic routing protocols are the subject of the next chapter, wherein the author discusses RIP, OSPF, BGP, and CIDR. The newer ones, such as IGRP, EIGRP, and MPLS, are of course not treated. UDP is then discussed in the next chapter, with examples given and IP fragmentation discussed, along with a brief overview of how UDP and ARP interact. This is followed in Chapter 12 by a discussion of broadcasting and multicasting, and the author outlines briefly the problems that rise when attempting to broadcast through routers. Then in the next chapter, the ICMP mechanism for multicasting is discussed. Here again the treatment is dated, since in IPv6 IGMP is replaced by multicast listener discovery messages and there are no broadcast addressing in IPv6. The DNS database is discussed in the next chapter, with emphasis on how resolvers communicate with name servers using TCP/IP. The discussion is limited to A resource records, which is replaced in IPv6 with AAAA or A6 resource records. I did not read the next two chapters on TFTP and BOOTP so I will omit any commentary. It is in the next chapter that the basics of TCP begin to be discussed, with the details of the TCP header given. The dynamics of the TCP connection is then treated in chapter 18, with a complete TCP state transition diagram given. The discussion is very helpful to those who need a thorough understanding of the connection steps in TCP. This is followed by a treatment of the Nagle algorithm and delayed ACKs in chapter 19. The exercises in this chapter need to be worked to appreciate the discussion. The following chapter overviews how TCP sliding windows work, and how window sizing is done. Slow start, the bandwidth-delay product, and the urgent mode are all treated in great detail. The mathematical considerations behind TCP timeout and retransmission are given in chapter 21, along with a discussion of the congestion avoidance algorithm and the fast retransmit and fast recovery algorithms. Then in chapter 22, the TCP persist timer, used to prevent transmission deadlock and the silly window syndrome, is discussed in detail. The ability of TCP to implement a keepalive timer is discussed in the next chapter. Since it is out of date, I did not read the next chapter on the future of TCP. The SNMP network management protocol is outlined in Chapter 25, with definitions of MIB and an overview of SNMP traps. These are very important concepts given the enormous importance of network management currently. There are currently several vendors that supply packages for polling, reporting, and forecasting network behavior that are based partially on SNMP and MIBs. Telnet and Rlogin, which are still used extensively in modern networks, are discussed in the next chapter. After reading this chapter, the reader will have a thorough understanding of how these protocols work, which is also true of the next chapter that covers the FTP protocol, and the SMTP protocol, which is covered in chapter 28. I did not read the last two chapters of the book so I will omit any commentary. The author has done a good job here of relating to the reader the structure and dynamics of TCP/IP based on what was known at the time. In view of the fact that IPv4 is still alive and well, and given that TCP implementations have only been slightly modified since 1994, one can still read this book profitably.
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Summary: Inspired Engineering Textbook
Review: Excellent for network administrators, programmers, and system administrators alike. Absolutely superb description from the ground up of what actually happens on IP networks. After reading this book, whenever you have a network problem, your first inclination will be to reach for a sniffer...:-)
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Summary: A Masterwork on the subject of TCP/IP
Review: Having come from a rather diverse computer background, I have come accustomed to books being wordy, and sometimes grammatically incorrect. This book is the first in a long time to break that general rule. As a beginner to TCP/IP and the other topics discussed in this text, I have found this book to be concise and clear in all the items discussed. It is simple enough for anyone with some basic computer experience to understand. The book itself beautiful from the cover to the wonderful illustrations included. Though Hard Cover books are often frowned upon because of their size, this book will likely be a proud addition to your collection. I used this text as an adjunct to my CS 268 Class at WVU a class on internet programming and it follows beautifully not only with the lectures, but in the way the material is organized and presented. Don't let the price tag scare you, this book is worth every nickel and dime spent on it.
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Summary: Superb for Concepts
Review: Highlights: *) Very clear and precise
*) source code in book very nicely explained. Drawbacks: *) Sometimes very heavy treatment (at least on my poor brain!)
*) Not a very portable reference (considering there are 2 more volumes). Is there a CD version ;-) ?? I initially bought this book to understand how the tcp/ip stack was implemented in linux.
Being a programmer mainly doing business related software, I initially found understanding this a little daunting to go through . After a little effort and looking at the source, i found this book enlightening! I found it extremely useful comparing code and concepts in the book with the actual tcp/ip source (FreeBSD and Linux). I am still going through 3 volumes of the book. A very good text book if you want to dig into the core of tcp/ip.
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Summary: Great book, highly recommended
Review: How can you tell that "TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1 - The Protocols" by Richard Stevens is the definitive book on TCP/IP? Even after 10 years, this book, having been written in 1994, is still considered to be one of the top, if not the top, rated books on TCP/IP. Not only does this book deserve credit, but his companion book - "TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 2 - The Implementation", which came out in 1995, is also highly favored. If you go to your friendly neighborhood bookstore, you are most likely to find this book on the shelf in the networking section. Despite its early publication, and its lack of information on IPV6, it is very relevant today. I was once trying to find out why my protocol analyzer was always showing PSH and I was curious as to why it was used. In my other TCP/IP books, there was only about a line or two on the subject, whereas in "TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 2- The Implementation", there were a couple of pages of information to peruse. Similarly with the RST flag, the information was detailed regarding its use and easy to follow. All the protocols are given a very thorough treatise TCP, IP, UDP, ARP, ICMP, FTP, SMTP, Telnet and Rlogon are among the protocols that are illustrated in great detail. All the required information that is relevant to know about these protocols is provided. The examples are first rate and easy to follow and they are in abundance. Do you want to know how keepalives work? How about an example, complete with instructions, on how to simulate a crash and the tcpdump output you can expect to see. There are 2 other examples, just in case you missed the point! He is obviously a unix afficionado, having written a very popular - "Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment". Even if you are not a Unix user, and I am not one myself, his use of unix tools for the examples are very easy to follow and easily translate to common windows networking tools. He takes great pains to make sure you understand his examples, which I find refreshing. Believe me it's everything you have ever wanted to know about TCP/IP and then some. If I had to have only one book on the subject, this would be it. Regardless of the level of networking you find yourself at, you should get more than your times worth of information out of this book.
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